Embodiments of the present specification relate generally to data transmission, and more particularly to systems and methods for real-time access to patient data from remotely connected systems.
Real-time access to comprehensive patient data, particularly during emergency situations, facilitates timely diagnosis and appropriate treatment of a patient. Accordingly, hospitals and other healthcare institutions store the patient data as electronic medical records (EMR) for use by authorized medical practitioners. Particularly, the EMR may correlate patient metadata with acquired diagnostic information to provide the medical practitioner with historical and current medical information for each patient.
Typically, the EMR may be stored, for example, in a hospital information system (HIS), a radiology information system (RIS), and/or a picture archiving and communication system (PACS) that is accessible to the medical practitioner. As the EMR includes privileged patient data, traditionally, an EMR storage and management system is often deployed in a designated system in the hospital premises. Evolution of telemedicine systems, however, has enabled access to traditional desktop-based healthcare systems including an EMR system from remotely located wireless, mobile, and/or wired systems.
Conventionally, telemedicine systems may provide specialized medical services over large geographical areas, including rural areas, where modern medical facilities and skilled medical practitioners have limited reach. Particularly, telemedicine systems provide a unique opportunity to shift specialized healthcare outside a traditional hospital setting to a patient in a clinic, in a home-centered setting and/or a remote unit setting. For example, a telemedicine system may allow a remotely located medical practitioner access to diagnostic resources, and previous and/or current patient data to allow expeditious detection of a patient condition and/or provision of appropriate treatment during medical emergencies.
Accordingly, certain healthcare institutions have extended access to select healthcare systems over wireless networks such that the patient data may be transmitted to authorized mobile devices such as laptops, tablets, cellular phones, and/or personal digital assistants (PDAs). Other healthcare institutions employ telemedicine solutions that provide access to certain medical instrumentation and applications via cloud-based servers rather than deploying these resources in the hospital premises. For example, a telemedicine solution may integrate computing, wireless networking, data storage, and/or middleware technology into a cloud-based architecture that may be remotely accessible to authorized medical practitioners. Use of such cloud-based architecture allows for reduction in energy and equipment costs, while also saving floor-space in the hospital premises.
However, there remains a gap between availability of conventional telemedicine systems and their practical implementation. Many of the conventional telemedicine systems, for example, rely on expensive proprietary hardware and/or dedicated wireless links, and thus, may not be scalable. Alternatively, certain telemedicine systems employ more widely available cellular communication links. The cellular communication links, however, may be affected by low data rates, congestion, and/or repeated interruption, thus limiting use of the cellular links in emergency situations. Furthermore, a large volume of patient data such as diagnostic images may further impede timely and robust delivery of life-critical medical data to a remotely located medical practitioner.